"I'm
sorry, Michael, I'm through, I'm finished. I can't stand it anymore.
I'm leaving you. I want a divorce. I love you. I always will. But I'm
leaving you," said Patricia Wellington to her husband of thirty
years, Michael Wellington.

Patricia
Wellington stood in the middle of their living room in their lovely
home in Westchester, New York, a beautiful place of rolling green hills
topped with expensive homes. Theirs was one of the beautiful homes,
full of memories of their children and their lives together. Patricia
was 51 years old, auburn hair, brown eyes, still lovely, wearing a summer
print dress. She stood looking at Michael Wellington, seeing in her
mind's eye the tall, handsome young lawyer she had married thirty years
ago, then seeing the man who had become a distinguished federal judge.
She had been proud of him for so long, until he became a judge in the
drug enforcement division of the federal court system, ten years ago.

The
trouble started when Congress passed the mandatory drug sentencing laws
and escalated the mad War on Drugs. Michael Wellington, the man she
had loved so long, was destroying lives, destroying families, causing
children to be put in foster homes. He was doing this when he sentenced
hundreds of men and women of all ages to mandatory prison terms of ten
years, twenty years, sometimes life-terms for smoking marijuana or growing
it in their basements, in their cornfields, on their rooftops.

It
was this that had been eating away at her C Patricia Wellington did
not think that marijuana users were criminals, but rather that her husband
had become the criminal.

"But
you can't mean that Patty, you can't, not over this, not over this marijuana
evil," pleaded Michael. "You know I have a job to do. You
know smoking or growing marijuana is against the law. It's my job to
uphold the law, Patty. That's my job. Even if I wanted to be lenient
with marijuana users, which I don't, my hands are tied. I didn't make
the laws. The laws force me to give these people mandatory sentences.
Don't you see that, Patty, don't you? Please don't leave me over this."

Patrician
Wellington's head dropped and shook from side to side in pain and sadness.
This was the same argument they had been having for the last five years.

"Michael,
if there was a law that put people in prison for smoking cigarettes
or drinking beer, like Prohibition in the 20's, would you be sending
those people to jail too? I smoke, Michael. Your son and daughter drink
wine or gin sometimes. Would you put them in jail if that were the law,
Michael?"

Michael
Wellington looked into his wife=s eyes, and said with great sadness
but firmness, "Yes, Patti, I would have to. It's the law. Without
law, Patti, there is no civilization. It is only the law that stands
between us and anarchy. If I don't defend the law, me, a judge, who
will? Don't you see how important that is?"

"Michael,"
said his wife, Athere is vast difference between law and justice. Law
is supposed to uphold justice. Law is supposed to protect our inalienable
rights. It’s supposed to uphold human justice. Justice is far
more important than law. Michael, every monstrous totalitarian regime
in history has had laws, thousands of laws. Every tyranny on the face
of the Earth has enslaved their people with laws. The Nazis had such
laws. The Soviets had thousands of laws. And all those laws were used
to enforce the State's tyranny. Michael, there is something far more
important than the law. Have you ever asked yourself if the laws you
defend are just? Have you ever asked if our government has the right
to imprison someone for smoking a marijuana cigarette or taking cocaine?”

"Have
you ever asked yourself whether your government has the right to tell
someone what he can or cannot smoke, or what he can sniff up his nose,
especially if he harms no one but himself, Michael? Isn't the law supposed
to protect people from violence or fraud by others? Isn't the law only
supposed to punish people who physically hurt other people, and this
hurt has to be proved to a jury in a court of law? Who does a person
hurt who smokes marijuana or takes cocaine, Michael? Where is the victim
the law requires for a crime?

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If
he hurts himself, so what? Doesn't a person have the right to hurt himself?
Don't we own our bodies, Michael? Don't I have the right to eat what
I want, smoke what I want, drink what I want? Who is any politician
sitting on his pseudo-moral high horse to tell me, or you, or anyone
else that they can't? These are the same slimy, hypocritical politicians
who used drugs when they were young, who tax and regulate us to death.
How dare they presume to dictate my personal behavior or the behavior
of anyone else. How dare they?"

"But
you, Michael, you refuse to see the difference between law and justice,
between a law passed by a stupid, power-hungry politician, and what
is right. The law is supposed to protect our inalienable rights, not
some politician's twisted “moral” opinions he wants to shove
down everyone's throat. The politicians we elect are supposed to be
our agents, not our masters.

Michael,
the Nazi judges who were tried and hung at the Nuremberg trials, they
said the same things you say. The same things, Michael. They said they
were judges, that they were only "following orders." They
said they had a "duty" to follow the laws, the Nazi's laws,
Hitler's laws, to sentence innocent Germans to prison, or be shot by
a firing squad, or gassed in the chambers by the millions. The judges
said the same thing, Michael, they gave the same excuse. May they rot
in hell. They were cowards, Michael. They valued their job and their
position more than the lives of the innocent people they destroyed in
their courtrooms. It was these judges, Michael, these supposed defenders
of the law, Nazi law, who should have known better."

"You
think things are that different in American today? Michael, I have contempt
for drug-court judges and prosecutors. They are power-hungry, narrow-minded
men who don't see beyond their noses. They see a law passed and, like
robots, automatically defend the law in their courtrooms.

They
don't judge the law with their conscience. They don't see the monstrous
injustice of the laws, the lives they destroy with their actions. A
judge's duty is to follow the law, but if the law is monstrous, they
should quit their jobs. I think that drug-court judges are not much
different than the Nazi judges who murdered thousands of innocent people
in their courtrooms. Their crimes against humanity are only of a lesser
degree."

Michael
Harrington turned white, his eyes had a look of total shock. He had
heard his wife's arguments before. But never had she accused him of
being like the Nazi judges. It rocked him, and something inside him
believed her. But something else, something stronger, shut down in him,
drawing in, pulling him into a dark cave in his mind. He became furious,
murderously furious with his wife for the first time in thirty years.

"Are
you saying I am a murderer, Patricia, that I am no better than the Nazi
judges they tried and executed in the Nuremberg trials? Do you think
I should be executed for murder, Patricia? Is that what you are saying?
If that is the way you feel, then I think you are right. We should be
divorced."

"Michael,"
said his wife, just as furious, "I am saying that what you are
doing is evil. Evil, Michael. You hide behind the law, just like the
Nazi judges did. You say it is your duty to uphold these evil laws.
So, until you stop doing this, to me you are evil. I'm so sorry to say
this, because I don't want to. But yes, to me you are no different than
the Nazi judges. And I cannot live with you any more."

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"I
cannot live with a man who sentences people to twenty years in prison
for taking cocaine or carrying a joint of marijuana in their pocket.
Did you know that some people smoke marijuana to treat their nausea
from cancer chemotherapy. There are thousands of cancer patients in
excruciating pain because chemotherapy makes them violently nauseous,
and marijuana is the only thing that can stop the nausea. Yet the vicious
drug laws make it a crime to smoke marijuana.”

“I
cannot live with a man who's decisions condemn cancer victims to excruciating
pain, or to die drowning in their own vomit because they can’t
take marijuana to stop their nausea from chemotherapy drugs. I cannot
live with a man who destroys families by sending mothers and fathers
to prison for twenty years for smoking a lousy joint of marijuana. I
cannot live with a man who thinks more of politician's laws than of
justice. I cannot live with you anymore. That is all I have to say,
Michael."

With
that, she turned stiffly and walked out the door of the house she had
lived in for thirty years, away from the man she had once loved.

Mr. Turtel has
written two books, published over fifty articles, and has been interviewed
in both print and broadcast media on the subject. His latest book, Public
Schools, Public Menace has garnered national media attention – recently,
for example, Dr. Laura Schlessinger featured the book on her nationally
syndicated radio show.

Joel Turtel is
available to discuss his book Public Schools, Public Menace in the media,
at conferences, or with individual groups. Be warned though, you may be
shocked by the revelations he has uncovered in America's public-school
system.

They don't judge
the law with their conscience. They don't see the monstrous injustice
of the laws, the lives they destroy with their actions. A judge's duty
is to follow the law, but if the law is monstrous, they should quit their
jobs.